Daniel Nahum/pexels.com

Brazilian electronics distributor Oderço went public October 16 after two pallets of Zotac RTX 5090 graphics cards — worth approximately R$2.5 million (about $495,000) at its acquisition cost — arrived at Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo and then, by the company's account, simply ceased to exist. No arrest has been made. No pallet has been recovered. The airport's operator, GRU Airport, did not respond to media inquiries. Brazil's Federal Police and Federal Revenue Service have issued no public statement.

"In our more than 38-year history, we have never encountered a situation like this — and we will not remain silent," company president Oderço Matos said in a video. "Two pallets of Zotac RTX 5090 graphics cards have gone missing at Guarulhos International Airport. The merchandise is worth approximately R$2.5 million (about $495,000) at cost, and to date, we have received no answers." The full account of the disappearance, including Matos's quote, was reported by Tom's Hardware on October 18, 2026.

World's Scarcest Consumer GPU, Most Coveted by Thieves

The RTX 5090 launched at an MSRP of $1,999 in January 2025. It has spent most of its commercial life out of stock. By October 2026, the card had effectively disappeared from legitimate US retail channels: Micro Center — one of the country's largest brick-and-mortar GPU retailers — relisted numerous RTX 5090 models from "out of stock" to "not carried," while secondary-market prices climbed to $9,500 per card on Amazon — four to five times the original launch price.

The root cause is structural, not cyclical. The RTX 5090's GB202 chip is manufactured by TSMC for Nvidia using the same capacity in heavy demand for data-center accelerators. As of early October 2026, hardware leakers reported that Nvidia had redirected all future GB202 allocations to its RTX Pro professional workstation series — a claim sourced to leaker MEGAsizeGPU and corroborated by a separate alleged factory notice cited by leaker hongxing2020, per Notebookcheck's October 10 report. Nvidia has not officially confirmed or denied these reports as of publication. What remains in the channel is, by most accounts, all that will ever exist of the consumer RTX 5090 — making each pallet worth considerably more than its invoice suggests.

At Brazilian street prices of roughly R$33,999 to R$39,000 (approximately $6,732 to $7,722) per card, the two missing pallets almost certainly contained 63 or more units — almost certainly more, since the R$2.5 million figure represents acquisition cost, not retail value. Tom's Hardware calculated that minimum based on current Brazilian retail pricing for the card.

How Pallets Vanish Without a Heist

The absence of any confrontation, security incident, or physical breach at Guarulhos is not the reassuring detail it might appear to be. Among cargo security researchers, that absence is, if anything, more diagnostic than a clean surveillance tape. Roughly one-fifth — about 22 percent — of all cargo theft incidents globally involve insider employee participation, according to the TT Club/BSI 2025 Cargo Theft Report: employees or contractors who can divert, misdirect, or "lose" cargo through paperwork manipulation rather than force. The US-based supply chain security firm Verisk CargoNet described the modern cargo theft landscape in its Q1 2026 report as dominated by "transnational organized crime groups" that favor "goods that move easily through online resale channels" — a description the RTX 5090 fits precisely.

Strategic theft — the term used by cargo security specialists for theft accomplished through deception, misdirection, and fraud rather than physical force — has increased roughly 1,500 percent in the US between 2022 and 2025, and accounts for one-third of all cargo thefts reported to CargoNet, according to Senate Judiciary Committee testimony in 2025. A consignment that "arrives" at a cargo terminal and then "disappears" without triggering an alarm is, in this context, a textbook strategic theft scenario: the cargo may have been diverted at the point of handoff, claimed with falsified documentation, or redirected during warehouse staging — all actions that a person with legitimate access to the cargo system can execute without touching a fence or tripping a sensor.

São Paulo state accounted for 35.7 percent of all cargo thefts in Brazil during the third quarter of 2025, according to supply chain risk firm Overhaul. The TT Club/BSI 2025 Cargo Theft Report listed Brazil as the world's top country for recorded cargo theft incidents, accounting for the largest global share — ahead of Mexico, the United States, and India.

Guarulhos has a documented history with exactly this category of crime. In July 2019, armed men disguised as federal police drove into the airport's cargo zone, confronted workers at gunpoint, and left with approximately 750 kilograms (about 1,650 lbs) of gold and other precious metals worth at least $30 million, according to Reuters — one of the most brazen air cargo heists in South American history. That attack required visible force. The RTX 5090 pallets required none.

A Pattern With No Single Author

The Guarulhos incident is the highest-value single event in a long and escalating series of GPU supply-chain crimes, none of which has been attributed to a single organized group. The documented incidents paint a pattern of exploitation across every node of the distribution chain.

At the factory level: in May 2025, Zotac confirmed that RTX 5090 boxes at a newly opened Micro Center in Santa Clara, California, had been tampered with at its facility — customers received three crossbody backpacks instead of a graphics card. More than 30 confirmed cases emerged.

In transit: a buyer in France ordered an MSI RTX 5090 directly from Amazon France and received a non-functional card with its GPU core and memory stripped — components whose combined resale value represents the majority of the card's worth.

At the retail return level: an eBay seller sold a working Zotac RTX 5090 for approximately $4,000 and received back a card from which the GPU die and GDDR7 memory chips had been professionally removed. The stripped components were, in effect, the sale; the remaining PCB and cooling assembly were worth a fraction of the original price.

At the physical crime level: in February 2026, a thief broke into a computer hardware store in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, and made off with graphics cards valued at $11,800 — RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 models worth roughly 17 million won. In the United States, thieves stole two trailers marked with Nvidia branding, apparently expecting AI accelerators — and found 40,000 pounds (about 18,144 kg) of ballast sand.

The gang that arrived at Guarulhos, whoever they are, apparently found the real thing.

What Is a Card Worth When There Are None Left?

The most consequential dimension of this story, for buyers and distributors alike, is temporal. The RTX 5090 that went missing at Guarulhos was almost certainly part of existing channel inventory — stock built from GB202 chips already allocated to board partners before the reported reallocation to RTX Pro. If the leaker reports about GB202 reallocation are accurate, Nvidia is not producing more consumer RTX 5090 cards. The missing pallets are not replaceable with a reorder. They represent a permanent reduction in the total global supply available to the Brazilian market.

For Brazilian buyers specifically, the loss is compounded by the country's import duty structure, which makes locally-distributed stock the most price-accessible path to the hardware. The distributor's acquisition cost of R$2.5 million (approximately $495,000) translates to a street retail value of at least R$2.1 million to R$2.5 million (approximately $416,000 to $495,000) at current Brazilian prices — potentially more, given the scarcity premium that has driven prices upward throughout 2026.

Oderço's decision to publish a video appeal rather than absorb the loss quietly reflects the company's assessment that official channels have produced nothing and that public pressure is the only remaining lever. The company has issued no subsequent updates. As of this writing, the pallets have not been found, no investigation has been publicly opened, and no one from the airport's cargo operations has offered an explanation for why two pallets' worth of the scarcest consumer GPU on the market could arrive at a major international air freight hub and vanish without a trace.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many RTX 5090 cards were on the two missing pallets?

Oderço has not confirmed an exact count. The company disclosed only the acquisition cost — approximately R$2.5 million (about $495,000) — which Tom's Hardware put at 63 minimum based on current Brazilian retail pricing for the card. The actual figure could be higher, since R$2.5 million represents what Oderço paid, not what the cards would have sold for at retail.

Does cargo just "disappear" inside a secured international airport?

Not through any physical magic — but through insider diversion it can, and frequently does. The TT Club/BSI 2025 Cargo Theft Report finds that roughly 22 percent of all cargo theft incidents globally involve insider participation: employees or contractors who divert, misdirect, or "lose" cargo through documentation fraud rather than force. The absence of a visible security breach at Guarulhos is consistent with strategic theft — a term for cargo crime accomplished through deception or paperwork fraud, which has grown roughly 1,500 percent in documented US incidents between 2022 and 2025. Guarulhos's cargo handling ecosystem involves multiple parties — freight forwarders, ground handlers, customs agents — any of whom could theoretically have executed a redirect without leaving evidence of a physical intrusion.

Is the RTX 5090 actually discontinued?

As of October 19, 2026, Nvidia has not officially confirmed or denied reports that it has stopped allocating GB202 chips to the consumer RTX 5090 in favor of its RTX Pro professional series. Hardware leakers posted claims on October 10, 2026, that GB202 chips now go exclusively to RTX Pro cards. Nvidia has not issued a public response to those specific reports, though the company's earlier September 2025 statement confirmed that Founders Edition cards were still in production at that time. What is confirmed: the RTX 5090 is no longer listed at Micro Center as an available product, and secondary-market prices have climbed well above $7,000.

Why is Brazil particularly exposed to GPU cargo crime?

São Paulo state — where Guarulhos is located — accounted for more than 35 percent of all cargo thefts in Brazil in Q3 2025 according to supply chain security firm Overhaul. Brazil ranks as the world's top country for cargo theft incidents, per the TT Club/BSI 2025 Cargo Theft Report, ahead of Mexico, India, the United States, and China. Electronics are among the highest-priority targets for cargo criminals globally because of their high value-to-weight ratio and ease of resale in secondary markets. A two-pallet shipment of RTX 5090s combines all three characteristics that make cargo criminally attractive: compact, extraordinarily valuable, and immediately liquidatable on secondary markets that are currently paying four to five times MSRP.